


Heaven Sent You To Me

by cuttooth



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Not Happy, Spiral weirdness, Timeline What Timeline, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 22:03:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16563968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuttooth/pseuds/cuttooth
Summary: “I know you,” says the thing from the tunnels. Martin isn’t sure what he knows anymore.





	Heaven Sent You To Me

**Author's Note:**

> An idea came to me, and refused to leave, and here it is. It's a bit of a deviation from the hopeful-&-happy stuff I like to write for this fandom, though there is a touch of that in there. Don't worry too much about timeline plausibility.
> 
> Title and subheadings from "There, There" by Radiohead.

**_walking in your landscape_**

Tim will not stop talking about the wallpaper. Martin can’t entirely blame him. It is...unsettling, one sickly color sliding into another when you’re not paying attention, patterns warping from stark geometry into twisting organic coils, asymmetric and grotesque. Martin tries not to look at it, but Tim insists on drawing his attention back again and again, rambling and frantic.

“It’s definitely moving,” he says. “Can’t you see it? Like there’s something _behind_ the pattern. Look!”

“It’s your imagination,” Martin tells him, and doesn’t look. Doesn’t think about the wallpaper. Doesn’t think about the tunnels, the thing that sent them here, its _hands_. Doesn’t do anything but walk down that endless, spiraling corridor, avoiding his own reflection in mirrors, the way its eyes don’t exactly meet his.

“Should we try going right again?” he asks.

“I can only see it out of the corner of my eye,” says Tim. “It stays still when you look right at it.”

“Don’t look at it,” Martin says, “It’s messing with you.”

“I thought you said it was my imagination?”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not messing with you. Should we try going right again?”

Tim does not reply. Martin turns, and Tim is gone. The corridor is gone. Instead there is a mirror, filling the hallway, an entire mirrored wall. It reflects the corridor perfectly, its diseased walls, its lurid yellow carpet, curving on into infinity. It reflects Martin, reflected eyes not exactly meeting his. It reflects _something_ in the distance, contorted and shifting, moving towards him in rapid, lurching stop motion. 

Martin wheels, gasping. The figure standing directly behind him is tall, almost human enough to be believable except for its hands. It smiles.

“You lied to your friend,” it says. “You pretended not to know me.”

“I don’t know you,” Martin tells it. “I’ve never seen you before. Not before you trapped us in here.”

Except, _does_ he? There is something strangely familiar about the tilt of the head, the curve of the cheek, the curling blond hair that makes Martin want to push his fingers into it. There is something - 

No. He shakes his head. This place is deluding him. 

“You sound very sure,” the thing says. “But I know you. I...recognized you, before, up in the Archives, but in here I _know_ you. It is...interesting. I never know which pieces of Michael will surface until they become part of me.”

It sounds mildly curious, as if considering some surprising but ultimately unimportant idea. 

“Look,” says Martin, “If you’re going to - to kill me, you might as well just get on with it.”

“I’m not sure about that now,” the thing says, “Before, I was quite sure I could kill you. That I would enjoy it, even. It’s different, looking at you with Michael’s own eyes. Maybe I’ll let you go instead. Would you like that?”

“What about Tim?” 

“What do you care?” the creature says, its tone sullen. “You want to go and help the Archivist, don’t you? Isn’t that the most important thing to you? You can go, and I’ll keep your friend. I’ll consume him, slowly, from the inside out, until his mind is a dry husk and his body shivers to ashes.”

“I’m not leaving without him,” Martin says, as firmly as he can manage, although he is trembling. The thing frowns, petulant, one of its unfeasible hands lifting to the wall beside it. There is a low, creaking sound. 

“Fine then,” the thing says, and steps through a door. 

“Martin!” Tim calls from behind him. Martin turns, and the mirror is gone, replaced with a corridor. Tim looks hollow-eyed and sickly, wearing a few days’ worth of beard scruff that he didn’t have before. 

“What the hell happened?” Tim demands. “You were just - gone.”

“I - ” Martin says. His gaze snags on his own reflection in a mirror, its eyes sliding over his shoulder into the disappearing curve of the corridor. He follows its gaze, and at the farthest edge of vision catches a flash of movement. Just for an instant, and then it’s gone. 

“I don’t know.”

  


**_someone on your shoulder_**

Martin has a dream about being happy. Not that he’s particularly unhappy, as such. But he has always craved more affection than he’s been able to inspire in others, so maybe it’s not surprising his subconscious would fill the gap. 

He first started having the dream not long after he moved to London, when he was feeling most alone. Since then he’s had it from time to time, usually when he’s feeling stressed or sad. The details are vague and changeable, but the one constant is _someone_. An unmistakably male but otherwise non-specific person with features Martin can never recall after waking. It is always the same person, though, he knows with all the certainty of dream logic. And always he feels happy, safe and cared for. 

It is, he sometimes thinks mockingly when he wakes, the dream lingering in his head, the best relationship he’s ever had. 

He has been having that dream a lot, lately. He could put it down to the strain of everything that’s happened: Sasha’s disappearance, Jon’s fleeing, overly aggressive police investigations and supernatural threats to his life. Just the overall “living in a waking nightmare” thing, as a whole. 

Except. 

Well, except his non-specific dreams are starting to develop very specific features. He wakes remembering that he was in his old flat, or the Institute, or that café down the street that shut down years ago. He used to go for lunch there a lot. He wakes remembering a shy smile, a large hand folding gently around his, curling blond hair that he always wants to rearrange. The _someone_ of his dreams somehow melding with a face he’s seen in nightmares, tunnels and mirrors and jagged claw hands. 

Martin isn’t sure if it’s just his brain’s response to psychological trauma, or if it’s that _thing_ , still messing with his head. He...probably should tell someone about it. He doesn’t. 

He should also probably tell someone about the new door that’s appeared in his bedroom, on the wall adjoining his neighbors’ flat, which definitely shouldn’t have a door in it. The door is pale yellow wood, and gives off a faint, muggy warmth when Martin gets near it. He does not open it, and nothing comes through from the other side. At times he has the oddest feeling that there is something behind the door he needs to know, some key to his dreams and the strange sense of displacement he’s been feeling. At other times he is very sure that he should _definitely_ tell someone about it, Elias or his landlord or someone. He doesn’t.

  


**_trip me as I speak_**

Martin does not hear the door open in the Archives. He is lost in a statement, captive to it, chest heaving with the weight of fear and sorrow in those pages. At the end of it, he wipes away someone else’s tears streaking his face, and looks up. The thing from the tunnels is standing there, watching him with an inquisitive expression. Martin scrambles out of his chair, heart pounding.

“That seems to hurt very much,” the thing observes. “Why do you do it?” 

Its hands flex a little, like a cat stretching its claws, a ripple of motion running through the tangled wreck of its fingers. Martin is glad of the desk between them, and aware of how little it matters.

“Someone has to,” he says. “And - and Jon’s not here at the moment.”

“Oh yes, the Archivist ran away, didn’t he? Killed the book keeper too, I hear.”

“He didn’t do that - he wouldn’t.”

“That’s what everyone is saying,” the creature shrugs sinuously, a lot of bones moving in its torso. “And if everyone is saying it, that’s usually enough to make it true. Has he told you it’s not? Has he even spoken to you?”

“He - the police are looking for him,” Martin says, aware of how defensive he sounds. “He can’t just pick up the phone.”

“Hmm,” the creature smiles, tapping a long, misshapen finger against its chin. Then the smile falls away, mouth turning down in dissatisfaction. 

“I still know you,” it says. “There is - too much Michael, right now. He is...overflowing, and I _know you_. More and more.”

“I don’t know anyone named Michael,” Martin tells the creature, willing himself to believe it. “You’re - mistaken. Or you’re trying to confuse me.”

“I know you,” it insists. “I know that as a child you wanted a dog, but were only allowed goldfish. I know you often perform small kindnesses that go largely unnoticed. I know how you like your tea, how your mouth - ”

“Stop.”

“ - tastes -  ”

“Please stop,” Martin can feel a lump in his throat, something that feels like a deep, aching sadness, but muted, like a sound trapped behind thick layers of glass. He can’t think why he could possibly feel this way. 

The thing takes a step towards the desk, lays those impossible hands on the wood, kneading it.

“I _want_ it to stop,” it says. “It - hurts, I think. The way your statements hurt.” 

It takes another step, around the desk, dragging sawtooth fingers across the grain. 

“I want to unknow you.”

Another step. Martin is transfixed, a rabbit staring into headlights.

“I should _kill_ you, but I - ”

The creature is right there, and Martin looks up into its face and feels that uncanny sense of recognition wash over him. He _knows_ this face, and not just from dreams or nightmares. It is right there, some understanding he cannot quite reach, visible but incomprehensible, a warped reflection in a broken mirror.  

One horrifying hand lifts towards him, and Martin still cannot move. The creature might be about to touch his face or tear it off. He does not know which thought terrifies him more. 

“He - meant to tell you,” the creature says, sounding the words out like a foreign language, stilted and unfamiliar. “When he returned - But instead existence _twisted_ and all that Michael Shelley was, was not. Had never been. Only echoes, scraps of knowing hoarded by the Eye.” 

The hand that comes to rest on Martin’s cheek is human sized, human shaped, feels anything but. A delusion of bone and skin. Martin cannot breathe. 

“Only me.”

Michael - it - leans over him, tips his face up to drag feverish lips across his and oh, he remembers. 

  


**_singing you to shipwreck_**

Michael hates being so tall, how he has to duck his head through doors and the chore of buying well-fitted shirts. He complains of being awkward and gangly, but Martin thinks he’s gorgeous and tells him so regularly. Martin’s never gone out with someone quite so tall before, and he thinks it’s rather nice. He likes having to tip his face up to be kissed as Michael leans down, or pulling Michael down to his level. He likes being able to be the little spoon, for once, Michael’s long limbs wrapping around him with ease. It’s a warm, safe feeling. 

He likes Michael, most of all, his gentle nature and good humor. The little hiccuping laugh that Martin finds endlessly charming. Michael is soft spoken and kind, a little shy but sure of himself in ways Martin wishes he was. Martin feels a braver person with him. 

He doesn’t like that he’s lying to Michael, like he’s lying to everyone at the Institute, about his education, his age. There’s still only a couple of years between them, even if it’s in the other direction than Michael thinks it is, but Martin feels endlessly guilty about the deception. He thinks, a lot, about telling Michael the truth. He will, eventually, but right now everything is so nice, he doesn’t want to spoil it. 

“I have to go on a trip, for work,” Michael tells him in bed one night. “Next week.”

“Next _week_?” Martin turns to look at him. “That’s a bit short notice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, something urgent came up apparently.”

“Oh, some sort of urgent archival situation?” Martin teases, and Michael drapes a long leg and an arm over him, pins him with mock ferocity. 

“I’ll show you an urgent situation,” he grins, nipping at Martin’s ear. Martin squirms and Michael flicks his tongue across his earlobe.

“Can’t - ah - can’t someone else go?”

“Gertrude asked me. She doesn’t trust the others as much, I think.” 

“Gertrude relies on you too much,” Martin says, and Michael frowns a little. He knows Martin’s opinions about the Head Archivist, but he won’t hear a bad word about the old dear. It’s one of his few blind spots, as far as Martin is concerned. 

“It won’t be a long trip,” Michael promises, nuzzling into the side of his neck, stroking playful fingers across his chest, tugging gently at a nipple. “A week, max.”

“And, uh,” Martin says, trying to hang onto his train of thought as Michael’s fingers trail across to his other nipple. “What exotic part of the world is Gertrude whisking you away to this time?”

“Russia,” says Michael, smiling, fully aware of the distraction his hands are causing. “Not as exotic as all that.”

“Make sure to pack warm clothes,” Martin says, wriggling himself further under Michael’s warm weight, pressing against him. “I wouldn’t want you coming back with bits missing.”

“I know exactly what bits you’re worried about,” Michael laughs breathlessly, and kisses him. Deepens the kiss as he shifts fully on top of Martin, rolling their hips together experimentally. 

Martin sighs into his mouth, pulls Michael closer and pushes his hips up in response, sliding hands up over Michael’s shoulders and spine. He can feel Michael’s dick already half hard against him, feels his own hardening, his arousal a lazily rising heat, none of the urgency of hands or mouths. He presses feather light kisses to Michael’s shoulder, his neck, feels Michael shiver at the brush of lips over that sensitive skin and smiles. Drives his hips up to meet Michael’s, their dicks sliding together, fully hard now, a slow and intoxicating rhythm building between them. 

Michael’s thigh slides between his as he tries to get closer, get more contact, his dick dragging a wet trail over Martin’s belly, mouthing at Martin’s cheek, kissing his hair, gasping incoherent endearments into his ear. It is doing all the right things for Martin, and he feels his own movements becoming more erratic, rubbing his dick more insistently against Michael’s hip, seeking out more of that hot, sweat slick friction, running his hands over every inch of skin he can reach, desperate to show how much this is to him, all of it, them together like this. 

The heat and arousal crests over and he groans into the juncture of Michael’s neck and shoulder, hips stuttering as he comes, long seconds of mindless pleasure. Michael stills as he does, lets Martin do as he wants, and as he feels Martin relax with a sigh, starts moving again. 

Martin is drunk on endorphins, still petting his hands over Michael’s shoulders, up to Michael’s face, cups the back of his head and pulls Michael down to be kissed, deep and breathless. He feels Michael’s hips move faster, erratically, rutting desperately against him as he comes, gasping nonsense words into Martin’s mouth. 

Michael kisses him some more, slow and careful, as the residual arousal fades away and their breathing returns to normal. Martin kisses back and slides his hands into Michael’s now-damp hair, loving how it curls around his fingers, soft and heavy. Eventually Michael rolls onto the other side of the bed, and Martin starts to think maybe it’s time for a shower. 

Michael is looking at him, eyes warm with affection. He looks like he’s thinking about saying something, lips parted indecisively.

“What?”

“I - nothing. You’re just - fantastic.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” says Martin, flushing at the praise. 

“When I get back,” Michael says, “I’m, uh, due a visit to my parents. You should come. They’ve been bothering me about meeting you for ages. If you want to, that is?”

“Oh, y - yeah, that sounds - nice,” Martin says. This is - significant. Right? It certainly makes him feel braver about the surprise he’s got for Michael. He hadn’t been entirely sure about it before, maybe he was presuming too much, but now he’s definitely going to give it to him. 

“I mean,” Michael continues, “If you don’t forget all about me while I’m off in Russia, that is.”

“We’ll see,” Martin teases, and Michael rolls back over to him for another kiss. _When he gets back_ , Martin thinks. _I’ll give it to him then, and I’ll tell him the truth about everything._

A week later, Martin finds a spare key sitting on his counter and racks his brain for why he got it made. In the end he gives it to a neighbor, just in case. He never uses it. 

  


**_why so green and lonely?_**

Mostly Martin doesn’t feel much, these days. Like his mind can’t quite fold itself through the labyrinth his reality has become, and instead is denying it as much as possible. He goes to work, and comes home, and ignores the fervent heat radiating off the pale yellow door in his bedroom. He very deliberately does not think about - about _him_. Just like in the tunnels, he keeps moving and does not meet his own eyes. He is very nearly entirely functional.

He _remembers_ , but the other version of his memories has not gone away, the version he’s believed for years, and there is a painful patch of static where the two don’t quite fit, grinding together like the ends of a broken bone. Like a poorly overwritten file.

He still remembers what it was like when he moved to London, not knowing anybody or anywhere, having just lied his way into a new job and terrified of being found out. A period he recalls as one of the loneliest of his life, so lonely he’d started dreaming someone to care about him. Except now he also remembers bright afternoons in the park, Michael’s hand inevitably finding his while they walked. Shoulders brushing playfully in the corridor at work. Evenings on the sofa with a bottle of wine. 

He remembers how they first met, at the Institute. Their first kiss. The first night they spent together. The last night they spent together, and how he had seen Michael off in a taxi to the airport, full of plans for when he returned. Except Michael hadn’t returned, and Martin never even got to mourn him, left only with the half-remembered echoes of his dreams.

Sometimes at night he has no choice but to let it overwhelm him, with no witness but that impossible, febrile door. Lies curled in a ball under his duvet in the small hours of the morning, ugly sobs racking his body as memories wash over him in merciless waves. 

And the next day, he goes back to work and doesn’t think about anything.

As it turns out, Jon did not kill anyone. Jon comes back, a momentary bright spot, and then Jon is gone again. Jon gets kidnapped for a month, and Martin doesn’t even think to ask where he is, too wrapped up in his own numb misery. Jon escapes and makes awkward conversation, and Martin wants to say _if you had just told me what you were doing, I could have helped, I would have at least known what was wrong_. But of course he doesn’t, because it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t change - 

“Elias tells me you’ve been...reading statements?” Jon says hesitantly. “They haven’t - are you all right? You look a bit...tired.”

“I’m fine,” Martin tells him, and Jon nods, looking relieved.

“Okay,” he says. “If you’re sure. Just - make sure the others help you, all right?”

“All right,” says Martin, not meaning it, and Jon excuses himself hurriedly, off to chase up his latest lead. 

It’s not that Jon doesn’t care, in his own way, about all of them. It’s obvious, if you know how to look at it. It’s just that Jon will never care in the way that Martin has so desperately wanted him to, and that’s nobody’s fault. It’s just life, and if it hurts, well, so do a lot of things. 

What hurts most is this: Michael Shelley disappeared, and nobody knew. Nobody mourned for Michael, who was kind-hearted and good and who Martin loved. Michael did not deserve whatever happened to him - whatever Gertrude and the Institute let happen to him - and Martin aches down to his very soul thinking that Michael might have died afraid and in pain.

All that’s left of Michael is an incomprehensible monster who remembers Martin, who seems always halfway inclined between killing him and kissing him. And Martin, his long-deferred anguish spilling out of him in unstoppable, arterial gouts, doesn't know how to feel about that.

  


**_the boney king of nowhere_**

The door in Martin’s wall opens, and Michael steps through. Martin almost drops the book he’s been, well not reading, but at least holding in his hands and looking at. He’s in bed, in _pajamas,_ and he hasn’t seen Michael since - since - 

“Oh,” he says. 

“I don’t know this place,” Michael says, head swiveling like a predator’s as he - it - _he_ looks around Martin’s bedroom His hands look almost exactly like human hands, just now.

“I, uh, I moved, about three years ago. M - Michael was never in this flat.”

Martin carefully marks his place in the book he wasn’t reading and puts it on the bedside table.

“I heard what happened,” he says, very cautiously. “With the Circus. You - you saved Jon’s life. Why? You were planning to watch him die in the tunnels.”

Michael’s mouth curls in annoyance, fingers flexing and deforming faintly by his sides.

“What does it matter? I returned your Archivist, didn’t I? I could have killed him. Aren’t you glad I didn’t?”

“Of course I am, I just - ” Martin chews on his lip, considering the wisdom of what he’s about to say, and then says it anyway. “Did you save him for - for me?”

Michael stalks towards the end of his bed, seeming to grow taller somehow, stretching towards the ceiling, arms extending like distorted shadows, growing into great jagged branches. 

“You care so much about your Archivist,” he hisses, “When he cares so little for you. Michael thought you spent far too much of yourself on people who do not appreciate it.”

Martin flinches a little at that, because that is just what Michael used to tell him. _You shouldn’t let people take advantage of you_. Funnily he’d never considered it taking advantage when Gertrude Robinson was asking.

“What do you care?” he snaps back, terrified beyond caution. If Michael is going to kill him, there isn’t much he can do about it. What’s the point in being coy? 

Michael looms over him, forehead knotted in confusion. Michael is _on_ the bed, the splayed bone cage of his fingers enclosing Martin, stabbing through the mattress on either side of him. 

“I am not Michael,” he says, hollow and almost pleading “But Michael is _me_ and he will not let me... _ignore_ you.” 

“Don’t, then,” Martin says, his voice trembling. He does not close his eyes as Michael leans into him. 

Michael’s mouth is too hot and vaguely waxy. His tongue is dry where it pushes into Martin’s mouth, smooth and too long. His hand where it comes to rest of Martin’s chest is too heavy for its size. Martin doesn’t care. He is long past caring. He pulls Michael closer, tangles their limbs, kisses him while tears slide down his cheeks. Michael’s hands are everywhere, what feels like dozens of them, hundreds of fingers. They slice Martin’s pajamas into rags, scrape delicately, curiously, across his skin, open him up and take him apart and all Martin can do is cling to him, shuddering and moaning against the fingers and tongues filling his mouth. 

At some point he hears his text alert chime and starts to lift his head. It’s late, so it could be Jon, he always forgets time zones when he’s traveling. He might need something -  

“Forget him,” Michael murmurs in his ear, twists inside him so Martin gasps and drops his head back onto the pillow. Michael is around him and within him, everywhere and everything, leaving no room for anything else. 

Afterwards Martin lies there breathing hard, skin slick all over though he’s not sure with what. He feels...bruised, exhausted, turned inside out so his raw nerves are exposed to the air. Hollowed out and blank. Above his head, a tiny brown spider moves along the bedroom wall. He watches it without thought. Watches as it makes its way across the expanse of pastel paint. Watches as Michael crushes it under one long finger, smiling. 

“You are so ordinary.” Michael sounds bemused, almost like he’s talking to himself. “So _pointless_. Yet of so much interest. Marked by the Web, owned by the Eye, hunted by the Hive, and now even the Lonely circles you.”

“And you,” Martin says listlessly. He is...terribly tired. 

“And me,” Michael agrees. His hand strokes across Martin’s face, his hair, hot and heavy.

“They will devour you alive, between them,” he says in Martin’s ear, low and intimate, like a promise. “And your Archivist will not save you. Michael always thought his Archivist would save him, right up until she pushed him through the door that made him me. Unless...”

“Unless?”

Martin can feel Michael smiling against his neck, blistering lips and keen teeth.

“Choose another door.” 

A low creaking sounds as the door opens again, and a sweltering draft sweeps across the room. Despite the heat a shiver runs through Martin and he pulls away, sits up carefully, aching and tender. Michael watches him like a great cat, fingers curling divots in the mattress. 

“What happens if I - go through?”

Michael crawls up his body, fever hot and entangling, and kisses him. It is nothing and everything like the way Michael used to kiss him, and when he moves away, his eyes are nothing and everything like Michael’s eyes.

“If you go through, you will be lost,” he says, “And I will find you.”

Martin cannot tell if it is a threat or a promise, a half truth or a lie of omission. Michael does not stand up, but somehow he is on his feet.

“It is such a - a _twisting_ thing,” he says. “ _Feeling_. I don’t know how you humans survive it.” He steps through the door, and it vanishes behind him.

  


**_we are accidents waiting to happen_**

Martin is in the break room trying to figure out the coffee machine when someone walks in. The man glances at him as he starts rooting around inside a cabinet, then turns back thoughtfully, a mug in his hand. He is tall, with curling blond hair that brushes his shoulders.

“You’re new, right?” he says. 

“Oh, uh, yeah,” says Martin. “I’m Martin. I just started in the Research department.”

The man smiles. It’s a nice smile, and it looks right on his round, friendly face.

“I’m Michael Shelley,” he says, extending a hand in Martin’s direction. “I’m in the Archives. Don’t believe what they say about us, we’re not all that bad.”

He gives a small chuckle and Martin finds himself smiling in response. Michael’s large hand folds around his and shakes it warmly. 

“How are you finding the place so far?” Michael asks, then leans in conspiratorially. “Bit weird, right?”

“I mean…yeah, a bit?” Martin laughs, relieved to hear someone else say it. The Magnus Institute is definitely unlike anywhere else he’s worked. In his first week he’s already been assigned to look into two mysterious disappearances and a supposedly haunted wardrobe. He’s been far too nervous to say anything about it, though, in case it gives away that he doesn’t have the paranormal investigative experience he claimed to.

“You get used to it,” Michael assures him. “I was pretty overwhelmed my first couple of weeks, too.”

“Yeah, it’s - I’m, I’m still getting used to London, really, so it’s...a lot. I mean, here I am trying to figure out how to get coffee!” Martin waves a hand at the uncooperative machine in illustration. Michael smiles and reaches past him, pushing a few buttons. The coffee dispenser starts to whirr and grind. 

“Just moved down, then?” he asks as the machine works. 

“Yeah - for this job, actually,” Martin tells him. “I mean I’ve been to London before, obviously, but it’s, well – “ 

“It’s different, living here.” 

“Yeah,” Martin says gratefully. The machine finishes pouring coffee, and he takes it with a nod of thanks. 

“I’ve been here a while,” Michael says, replacing Martin’s mug with his own and pressing some more buttons to start the process again. “I’d be happy to show you around, if you want?”

“That would be…really good,” says Martin. “There wasn’t much in the way of, umm, orientation or anything, when I started.”

“I meant around London, actually?” says Michael, a little tentative. “If you like, that is.”

“Oh!” Martin says. He can feel his ears going hot, and wills himself not to blush. Michael is being kind, it probably doesn’t mean anything. He still hears his voice squeaking a little as he continues: “That’s - that’s really nice of you!”

“Great!” Michael says, with another of those small, hesitant laughs. Martin finds himself liking the sound, wondering what he can do to hear more of it. 

“Umm, what have you got on after work today?” Michael continues. “We could go straight from here, get some of Chelsea out of the way, at least. There’s a few decent places to eat around here as well. I mean, unless you’re busy?”

“No!” Martin rushes to reply. “I’m - definitely not. That sounds...great, actually. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I did,” says Michael, taking his coffee mug and heading towards the door. “I’ll come and fetch you later, then – Research, right?”

“Yeah - I, I’ll see you later then? Should I meet you somewhere?” 

Martin tries not to seem too eager, although this is by far the best thing that’s happened to him since he moved to London. Even if Michael is just being friendly, even if it’s nothing more than that, it’s still…really nice. Michael smiles at him, ducking his head slightly as he backs through the doorway.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ll find you.”

  


**_heaven sent you to me_**

A door appears in Martin’s wall. He opens it and walks through.   



End file.
